 It's my great pleasure to introduce Stephanie Cam Lee Yee. She's a research fellow with the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. Stephanie's research focus lies primarily on the history of terrorism in the Asia-Pacific region and specifically in Southeast Asia. And this afternoon Stephanie's are going to round out our focus on the foreign policy dimensions of China's dilemmas with terrorism by focusing in on recent developments in terms of Uyghur militant connection in Southeast Asia. And our discussant is Dr Zhang Zhang from University of New South Wales at ADFAR here in Canberra. And so after Stephanie speaks I'll invite Dr Zhang to share his thoughts. Thank you Dr Clarke for inviting me here today. I must confess that this is a work that is still in progress. So please bear with me but I'm happy to take questions after today's presentation. My paper for today focuses on the question of whether there is or is there not a Uyghur militant connection in Southeast Asia. And in my presentation I will focus on the following. First provide an introduction of the definition of key terms which earlier a couple of the speakers had already done followed by some of the more recent developments of the Uyghur movement into Southeast Asia. The next section will be followed by an attempt to provide a theoretical framework to this phenomenon of the Uyghur movement into Southeast Asia and their potential for radicalization and recruitment by terrorist groups such as the Islamic State. In my paper I attempt to use the framework drawing on Nietzsche's struggle for recognition framework to explain the causes driving the Uyghur grievances into Southeast Asia. This will be followed by analysis of the further conditions that in my research looking at Southeast Asia of the factors conducive for Southeast Asia's Uyghurs to turn to militancy. Last but not least conclusion with brief discussion of implications and some policy recommendations. In my paper I will use the definition by Michael Lewis of terrorism as defined as the use or threat of use of extra normal violence to obtain a political objective through intimidation of fear directed at a wider audience. The second definition which I deal with in my paper is the term of refugees which I feel need to define according to the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees. Refugees are defined basically as persons who are owing to a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. It's outside the country of its nationality and is unable or owing to such fear is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country or who not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events is unable or owing to such fear is unwilling to return to it. This includes what the United Nations human refugee convention refers to as persons of concern which is defined interchangeably as refugees asylum seekers return refugees internally displaced persons return internally displaced persons stateless persons and various others. A look at in my research I attempted to trace the Uyghur movement into Southeast Asia dating back to 2009 and during which the first waves the first wave of Uyghur movement into Southeast Asia Southeast Asia coincided with the strike hard campaigns in 2009 the Urumqi following the Urumqi riots. In 2009 the Cambodian government deported a group of 20 Uyghurs who had been seeking asylum back to China. In the following year Laos deported seven Uyghurs that included a 34 year old man and his wife and the five children. In 2011 Malaysia also deported 24 Uyghur refugees. This was in a report by NSD International in which the Uyghur refugees were reported to have been arrested and following that report deported back to their country. In December 2012 Malaysia deported six Uyghur men who were using fake passports. 2014 Thailand Thai police rescued about 200 people who believed to be Muslim Uyghurs from human smuggling camp in southern Thailand. In April of 2014 16 Uyghurs were detained by Vietnamese border guards when they were trying to enter Vietnam illegally. The result of the arrest saw a backlash from the Uyghurs who seized the guards guns and attacked them with knives. Five Uyghurs and two of the guards were killed. The rest of 11 Uyghurs were then deported back on 21st of April. In 2014 in June the Philippines also deported five Uyghurs. These Uyghurs according to reports reached the Philippines using fake Turkish passports. They had attempted to go to Basilan from Sabah to meet personalities linked with the southern Philippines bandit group based in Mindanao, the Abu Sayyaf group. They had also visited Katabato city where they had attempted to meet with personalities associated with the Bangsa Moro Islamic Freedom Fighters, another criminal group based in southern Philippines. In the same year Indonesian police detained four Uyghurs for attempting to meet with Santoso who was recently killed by the Mujahideen Indonesia Timor, the MIT. Four Uyghurs were arrested and three were sentenced to six years. In 2014 in October Malaysian authorities detained 155 Uyghurs, more than half of them children. This was followed by the deportation of 109 Uyghur militants. Uyghurs back to China in July 2015 and following that the Erwin-Chine attack in August 2015 in which 17 suspects in total and two out of which two Uyghur suspects were arrested. In November 2015, the Indonesian security forces shot dead in a Uyghur called Faruk also known as Magalasi when they attacked Santoso's militant group. And in December 2015, one Uyghur man named Ali was arrested. He was found to have a bomb-making manual and lists of jailed Indonesian terrorists as well as Indonesians believed to have gone to Syria to join this terrorist organization, the Islamic State. In 15th of March 2016, this year, police shot dead two Uyghurs who allegedly fighting with the MIT and the two men's names were Nuretin, Alias Abdul and Magalasi, Batusan, Alias Faruk. In 24th of April 2016, Indonesian police killed another Uyghur militant who was a member of the MIT during a crossfire. Following the last two incidents in May, very recently and in July, Indonesian police arrested a Uyghur who was attempting to enter Indonesia via Batam. He was subsequently deported to China and in July, suicide bombing attack took place in Solo and one Uyghur was killed in this suicide bombing attack. So the findings from the table indicate a growing trend of the movement of Uyghurs into Southeast Asia since 2009 against the backdrop of China's strike hard campaigns and the Urumqi riots of 2009. This also corresponds to reports of the deportations of Uyghurs as shown earlier. And in parallel to this development, of course, is the emerging evidence of Uyghurs being involved, implicated in militancy and terrorism. Briefly, I would like to explain the different categories of Uyghurs in Southeast Asia and perhaps just take us back to the direct, some of the indirect and direct causes that scholars have referred to in attributing the Uyghurs. Attributing the reasons for Uyghur resentment. And these have been just to summarize some of these causes, which I think the earlier speakers have elaborated in great detail. These include the large scale crackdowns, particularly in the wake of the 2009 Urumqi violence, which saw inter-ethnic clashes between the Han Chinese and the Uyghurs. Securitization of Xinjiang social problems vis-à-vis criminalization and tighter religious controls. Uyghur resentment towards the government's policies, towards separatists and minorities. As well as various counterproductive effects of the central government's excessive devotion to stability maintenance. In addition, the counterproductive state led modernization effects in Xinjiang, results of which have led to rising income inequality between the Uyghur and the Han majority, as well as environmental degradation of the land in Xinjiang. As mentioned earlier by some of the speakers, in recent years we're seeing increased pressure by basing to restrict the flow of Uyghurs into Turkey and Central Asia, which has led to border controls, stricter border controls there. And this has facilitated Uyghur's decision to look towards Southeast Asia as a transit point. In terms of the Uyghur movement into Southeast Asia, they can be categorized into Uyghurs coming into Southeast Asia as genuine refugees, Uyghurs using Southeast Asia to transit and onto Turkey. And last but not least, Uyghurs that are using Southeast Asia as militant ground. The first category of Uyghurs as genuine refugees are those Uyghurs in Southeast Asia who are seeking to obtain refugee asylum status due to rail or perceived grievances. And unlike the Turkish Islamic movement which moved into supplant the threat from ETIM, such Uyghurs are not actively engaged in non-resistance. The second category of Uyghurs who use Southeast Asia as a transit point, these Uyghurs mainly enter into Southeast Asian countries, predominantly Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand, and use them as a transit point to travel onward to Turkey to seek political asylum. As well, there are also Uyghurs embedded within this group, the Turkish Uyghur trafficking network that is believed to be based in Southeast Asia. And I quote what Katalushi referred to as a network that was responsible for bringing terrorists from Xinjiang through Southeast Asia and onward to Turkey where they are staged, trained and incentivized NATO's proxy war in Syria. The third category of Uyghurs are Uyghurs entering into Southeast Asia, the pretext of linking up with militant groups here in Southeast Asia. There have been evidence of Uyghur involvement with the Indonesian terrorist group, the Eastern Indonesia Mujahideen or the Mujahideen Indonesia Timor. The group operates mainly in Central Sulawesi's Porso and has conducted training camps for Southeast Asian terrorist groups. This was evidence in the Uyghur involvement in the Aeron China attack in Bangkok, Thailand on 17th of August 2015 in which two Uyghurs were implicated. So moving on to the theoretical framework for my paper, at this point we're looking at the potential for Uyghur refugees to become radicalized or recruited. And here I draw upon the notion of the struggle for recognition. First off, we begin with looking at terrorists as seen from scholars such as Mark Sageman who emphasized the importance of social networks in mobilizing individuals. And so here my paper looks at terrorists, mainly as social activists who rely on violent extremist ideologies to mobilize action. For radical Islamists like the Islamic State, the necessity for self-preservation is tied to the struggle for recognition. What nature defines as the struggle for recognition, what nature defines as the self-will to power is in fact seen in the eyes of radical Islamists as a fundamental struggle for recognition. Furthermore, for radical Islamists the struggle for recognition is decidedly violent in nature and the rhetoric of radical Islamists seeking to appeal to the disenfranchised and to maximize recruitment is seen in the following ways. And the first is the equation of violence with morality, namely the notion of jihad as a divinely sanctioned violent struggle. And secondly, the conflation of individual responsibility for the collective grievances which is seen in the notion of the ummah as the constructed circularity between the self and the greater good or the larger Muslim community. And in my next slide I will briefly elaborate on how radical Islamists use the notion of jihad and ummah to appeal to individuals. For radical Islamist groups like the Islamic State, jihad is seen as a divinely sanctioned violent struggle and is fundamentally consequentialist in nature. This is theoretically in line with scholars like Halim. And the framing of morality in religious language provides the self with a basis for legitimizing his or herself in the overall struggle for recognition and is framed in moral consequentialist terms. So such consequentialist terms to morality is not unique to religious extremist groups and in fact is very much in line with universal narratives that are based on consequentialist morality. For instance, the mains justify the ends. In the second terminology, the use of ummah by the radical Islamists is how they frame the word ummah which is a reference to the collective Muslim community so as to maximize their recruitment. And they do so by referring to the individual and the collective in a constructed circularity thereby tying the individual responsibility to the collective. In the case of the Uighurs in Southeast Asia, this implies that the appeal of transnational Islamist terrorist movements like the Islamic State provides Uighurs not only with an outlet to give them to the grievances but also provide a moral and existential basis for legitimizing actions mainly through using violence as means to avenge the grievances of the larger marginalized Uighur communities. And I will now elaborate on some of the further conditions in Southeast Asia that are conducive for terrorist groups to exploit Uighur grievances for radicalization and recruitment purposes. The first of which is the persistence of Southeast Asian insurgency terrorism and human smuggling networks in this region. The second of which is the increased exposure by Southeast Asian countries to foreign sources of terrorism. And last but not least the Uighur refugee experience in Southeast Asia that might exacerbate the existing grievances towards the Chinese government. So in terms of the persistence of, in terms of the insurgency terrorism and human smuggling networks that we're seeing in Southeast Asia, we have been seeing ethno separatists in certain groups and militant jihadi groups operating in Southeast Asia for several decades. These ethno separatist insurgents in southern Thailand and southern Philippines have been struggling for various degrees of autonomy and militant groups continue to be inclined towards the ideology of the Al-Qaeda-linked Jama'a Islamiyah despite significant operational attrition of the group in the 2000s owing to concerted action by the regional governments. This problem has been compounded by the proliferation of human smuggling in some Southeast Asian countries and in a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Southeast Asian Migrant Crisis. Three problems were noted relating to the refugee influx in Southeast Asian countries. This included the asylum protection facilities for refugees including the Rohingyas who are fleeing Myanmar by boat. The proliferation of people smugglers who have made their livelihoods, ferrying migrants from Myanmar before handling them to traffickers and also the problem of trafficking along the time and leisure border which is interlinked to the smuggling issue. The Uighur refugees who were deported in July 2015 were also believed to have relied on a similar regional smuggling and trafficking network. In light of news reports of human trafficking camps that have also surfaced in recent times that human smuggling and trafficking networks may be indirectly facilitating militant flows gains for the traction. The second element that provides the permissibility of these refugees to become co-opted by terrorist groups is the increased exposure by Southeast Asian countries to foreign sources of terrorism. Of course with the rise of the Islamic State and here I quote Daniel Byman who writes in a recent article on international security as the Islamic State swept through Iraq slaughtering and enslaving Yassides and retaking the country's second largest city Mosul in much of the Sunni populated west. The perceived threat grew enough to limit intervention. After the 2015 Paris and San Bernardino attacks the perceived threat grew even more. In parallel to this development of course is the growing accessibility of social media platforms facilitated by globalization. Radical terrorist movements like the Islamic State have used social media platforms in their propaganda efforts as is well noted by the Islamic State's well-sophisticated magazine The Beak. Daniel Byman further notes that as part of this identity the Islamic State stresses not only a sectarian danger but also the threat of foreign governments and insufficiently observance Sunnis. The Islamic State's sectarian ideology gives the group a natural constituency of Sunni Muslims from which to recruit and who are more likely to support the organization when sectarian tensions is high. So using social media ISIS has attempted to exploit and to capitalize on existing sectarian tensions as we see in Southeast Asia we see taking place in Malaysia as well not forgetting the participation of Southeast Asian countries and more recently Singapore in anti-ISIS coalition efforts could also implicate the countries and render them increasingly prone to terrorist attacks and propaganda by the Islamic State. The internationalization of the Uighur issue could be seen in light of Chinese responses to the Uighur issue and in light of Southeast Asia's relationship with China. ISIS as a transnational movement has been seeking to enhance its appeal and reach in areas beyond the Middle East and mainly through social media. Finally the growing footprint in countries like Southeast Asia apart from countries like the Middle East and North Africa and kids that radicalize Uighur separatists that consider Southeast Asian countries hospitable to Chinese investments may seek to target diplomatic political and economic symbols of Chinese presence in the region including embassies, railway lines and Chinese commercial investments as well as places of interest that are frequented by Chinese tourists in fact during the Erwin Shrine attack there were six Chinese tourists that were targeted and the attack was supposedly carried out to avenge Chinese, avenge the Uighur deportation issue as well as the concerted crackdown on the human smuggling issue in Thailand. The third factor which I look at in my paper is of course the Uighur refugee experience in Southeast Asia it has been well noted that refugee camps serve as breeding grounds for radicalization and recruitment and of course I will not go into detail about the state of the asylum facilities because the papers as I mentioned still work in progress but as of now Southeast Asia does not have any formal asylum facilities and the inadequate protection for these refugees might be hospitable for them to turn to radical ideas and terrorist groups like ISIS might seek to co-opt them so the increase resentment by Uighur refugees over their repatriation and the disruption of human trafficking routes in Southeast Asia could result in a backlash from existing Uighurs in Southeast Asia who are seeking to avenge their kin and I also look at the notion of refugee warriors by Zolberg et al who mainly looks at the potential for who in fact defines refugee warriors as individuals that turn to Zolberg regards refugee warriors as refugees engage in the continuation of violence away from the conflicts in which they are fleeing but in this case refugee warriors the term refugee warriors might meet some further qualification in the sense that these refugees who arrive as refugees as genuine refugees might in fact turn into refugee warriors rather than come into Southeast Asia on the pretext of directly carrying out any kind of violent attacks in conclusion in Southeast Asia we're seeing an increased movement of Uighurs into Southeast Asia this will see concerted effort by Southeast Asian countries to clamp down on human trafficking and smuggling networks furthermore the increased deportation of Uighur refugees will also result in backlash from the existing Uighurs who are stationed in Southeast Asia who might seek to avenge their kin Uighur refugees existing grievances present an opportunity for Islamic State to co-opt into their fold and the Uighur movement into Southeast Asia indicates likelihood for further attacks on Chinese targets in Southeast Asia in terms of policy recommendations there's a need for strengthened counter-terrorism cooperation between China and Southeast Asia and I believe Professor May asked the question of in what particular areas do we need to look towards and I think right now the lack of intelligence and information sharing between China and the relevant Southeast Asian countries is lacking as well there's a need for improved asylum facilities in Southeast Asia and last but not least in light of the internationalisation of the Uighur issue there is a need to recalibrate China to recalibrate its strategy towards the ethnic minorities in Xinjiang also known as East Turkistan to the Uighurs so as to address their perceived grievances and last but not least I just want to do a bit of a marketing marketing here this is a recent handbook that was co-edited with Professor Rohan Gunnarathna and myself so if you're interested in understanding a bit more about the threat in Asia Pacific please feel free to check out this book and thank you very much Thank you Stephanie for your presentation and Dr Zhang will give his thoughts from the comfortable chair Okay Well firstly I would like to thank the microphone for inviting me to this conference and well I did attend the full conference but I have learned a lot from the various sessions I attended I would like firstly to congratulate Stephanie for choosing a very important and very interesting topic and that topic so far has been understood because when talking about the international link of Uighurs and most scholars and focus on the international link between the Uighurs in the Central Asian state to Middle East or to Turkey and also consequential as we heard from the last session from Professor Lu that lead to even the creation of Shanghai Cooperation Organization to deal with that international link of the Uighur issue and so the growing movement activity of Uighurs in Southeast Asia actually reflect the new development of the internationalization of Uighur issues and that could be have significant implication both for China and for Southeast Asia and I made that comment not because I generalized comment but also from my own experience and in Stephanie's presentation she mentioned about the bombing of the Uraban Sharan in Thailand in August 2015 and when that happened I was actually in Xinjiang and in Urumqi and attending the Xinjiang forum and when the news, when we heard the news about that bombing immediately that become a topic of discussion in the forum and our colleague from Thailand actually say that attack must be a retaliation about Thailand's deportation of Uighurs a few weeks ago so in that case we see how domestic issue in China now become why the international impact and which become a security issue for Thailand so in that case I think that's a very important topic and I think that Stephanie did well and what I'm going to do in that comment is that I would like to make a few comments because I understand this is a work in progress so I would like to make a few comments for Stephanie to think and when she work on this paper further and also I will read questions when making comment so I will start with the title of the paper the title of the paper which I received is different from the title and of the presentation so that is an interesting indication about how much it's a work in progress and the title, well the title of the paper I received is that South-East Asia's Vigo-Milipant Connection it's a statement and which claim the reason connection but the presentation, the title presentation is a question, is there a connection so my first question to Stephanie is that why the change and what's your answer to the question, is there a connection if there is a connection what kind of connection is it is that a connection between the Vigo-Milipant Group to the South-East Asia Terrorist Islamic Radical Group to ISIS or the link is rather as I will comment later or as you speak later it's about the Vigo-refugee has been radicalized during the period in the South-East Asia so what is exactly the link or why there is a link and why you put the question mark so that's the first comment on the title the second comment is on the aim or focus of the paper and the title actually give us impression my first impression is about the link between Vigo-Milipant Group and South-East Asia when I read the paper further up to page 5 I found the stated aim of the paper is the paper's aim is to show how Vigo-refugees in South-East Asia might be radicalized so the whole purpose of the paper actually want to explain why the or how Vigo-refugee in South-East Asia being radicalized or not so if that is the case that's nothing wrong with that focus but I might suggest you that if that's the aim of the paper and rather than state it on page 5 I would like to state it on page 1 so give a clear idea before we read those background section then the third comment is on the theoretical framework you mentioned here and your argument the theoretical framework actually you used is the so-called struggle for recognition and also actually I see there are two different theory body of theory you are using in the paper why that is the struggle for recognition which called the moral consequentialist approach the other one is actually the literature on refugee experience and radicalism and they are it seems to me they are two different thing but you mentioned the both but anyway my confusion or my question with regarding this theoretical framework is that if we follow your theoretical framework and the struggle for recognition as we see in the presentation it's largely arguing that terrorists seek to radicalize the activist through various means turn them into turn the refugee into radicalist so in that case I would like to see you know the more of the analysis of how this happened to the we go refugees and you spend a lot of time to talk about the theoretical framework but there are little information provided to show who actually try to socialize those are we go you are we go refugees and how in what means since when and what are the consequences and is there any evidence to show those terrorist attack within Southeast Asia made by these vehicles are actually the we go refugees cause you separated them into three groups some people are genuinely refugees some people are transit from Southeast Asia and some people are actually want to use Southeast Asia as a military ground so are these attack from which of these three groups and so that's my question to confusion and my other query about the validity of this theory of radicalization of we go refugee in Southeast Asia is that as I heard from Professor May yesterday and actually he made an important point that those people who move internationally those who move internationally are trying to leave China left China are actually those who oppose Chinese government most and actually the reason question are whether those we go already radicalized so they left China or are they being radicalized in Southeast Asia but anyway I want to see more of the analysis because the fundamental value of your paper is not the theoretical framework but rather the analysis of we go experience and the radicalization using that theoretical framework so we want to see the analysis and lastly about your conclusion which come back to my first question is that I want to see because when you talk about your conclusion I want to get the answer to the question you raise in your title easily a link but then I found your conclusion is about implication about how the moment of we go lead to a crackdown of human trafficking etc etc that's the response of the Southeast Asian government but my concern is that what is your answer to the question set at the very beginning that was the reason connection so I will stop here but anyway it's a very good paper I'm interested in a very important question which is so far understood First of all thank you Professor Zhang for your really detailed comprehensive comments they're well taken in response to the first question about the link to be honest I'm still trying to establish that myself so I don't have to answer but I note that within discussions on this weaker connection in Southeast Asia there have been criticisms that the link is tenuous at best and so I think I do have the responsibility to address this question in a way that would perhaps shed light on this question but the question that I will focus on in my paper I think we'll look at the extent of weaker militant connection in Southeast Asia The other question I also note that the conclusion is not really well synchronised with the rest of the paper it was actually written in quite a bit of a rush so my apologies for that I hope I addressed it Most of it is commented, yes or suggested Thank you I have a question from the floor First of all thank you very much I thought it was a very interesting paper and I think that it was very balanced in the sense of admitting how little we know to some of those answers that were actually being just asked the character of these people where they were radicalized why they're radicalized and I also really appreciated that you asked that second question of why they're radicalized and looking at the grievance issue which is often obscured in terrorism analysis One of the things that the question I guess I have for you is it seems to me that this situation puts the Southeast Asian countries in a very difficult position and you had very interesting policy recommendations and you mentioned one of them being working with China, I believe you mentioned addressing the grievances inside Xinjiang and I'm wondering if you believe that Southeast Asian countries may have a better position to work with China on those issues or are actually Southeast Asian countries in a very difficult position because they're also very dependent on China and might they not want to push China on some issues that they believe might be causing some of these problems in terms of domestic policies I think with the threat of terrorism becoming more internationalized I think there's greater impetus for China to work more closely with Southeast Asian countries and I think we're seeing that increasingly in the work that we do in some of these engagements that Chinese think tanks have actually come to Southeast Asia seeking to exchange information on counter-terrorism so I think there's a recognition within Chinese foreign policy and academia of the need to expand their counter-terrorism knowledge as a whole but in terms of the legislative aspects there's a lot room for improvement and I think both our Chinese experts have elaborated extensively on that and particularly in the room to operationalize some of these counter-radicalization measures in Xinjiang so from that I think the Singapore experience has some lessons and there is definitely a lot of room to leverage on the strengths in the Singapore case study on the part of Southeast Asia Thanks Stephanie for your presentation Just one question you've segregated the people travelling into Southeast Asia into different categories have you seen in your analysis whether those different categories are using the same people smuggling chains or whether a refugee is using a different approach into Southeast Asia compared to a militant? So far the results from my conversations with the people on the ground we know that there are several routes into Southeast Asia and there's no, the Uyghur refugees are trying to enter into Southeast Asia of course surreptitiously but the main route is Cambodia through Cambodia the entire Thailand and Malaysia but I'm not privy to that specific information That was my question but I do have another one I was just wondering now that Indonesian authorities have practically dismantled the MIT and proposal do you think Uyghurs will continue in regards to that militant activity that you mentioned will continue to come to Southeast Asia for training and for that type of experience and if so where? Thank you for your question You're right to note that Indonesian forces have been looking for Santoso for some time now and they had actually successfully managed to kill Santoso So with that the question about leadership or whether if you take out a leader the network will crumble I'm not an expert on Indonesia I think we talked earlier but there are still remnants of the MIT that even without a central leadership they're still capable of operating independently in terms of the extent of their operational capabilities their training there are training camps as you noted and they have been the weakest implicated in these training camps so my assessment is that they will still be active but in terms of the strength of the operational capabilities I think to a certain extent it has been weakened with the death of the leader Santoso Thank you for your presentation I was just wondering what would you say is the extent of the threat of Uyghurs joining these groups in comparison to perhaps others that may be joining these groups in Southeast Asia and what do you think this means for Australia? Okay so there are two parts to the question I'll answer the first part of the extent of the threat of Uyghurs joining I think in the case of the Uyghurs they are particularly more inclined to I mean if you look at the Rohingya Muslims they have also been in the region there are a large number of Rohingya refugees in this region as well but then the question is why are they not as susceptible as the Uyghurs to being radicalized I don't really have the answer but if we go back to the history of separatism in Xinjiang I think Uyghurs have been struggling for quite some time and I think their movement into Southeast Asia will perhaps open up new avenues for their further radicalization and for the further exacerbation of the grievances so the extent of threat I would say is moderate to high if you put a quantitative indicator of the threat and what does this mean for Australia? I think Australia and Southeast Asian countries particularly with Indonesia have had strong counter-terrorism cooperation and I think the continued counter-terrorism cooperation will be a right step in their direction to stem the threat of further radicalization and recruitment by terrorist groups Definitely I can email from the Department of Defense so it was an interesting presentation gave but I was just wondering that the movements of the Uyghur people seem to be predicated on the grievances historical and current that's happening in Xinjiang and I guess the sentiments towards the Chinese government so will we take this assumption then if China was to I guess better or at least improve the policies there to address the actual historical grievances of this ethnic group wouldn't that then alleviate to international communities especially Southeast Asian countries in their counter-terrorism activities rather wouldn't that sort of just alleviate ISR I guess or the need for ISR specifically monitoring this group of people and the movements Sorry the ISR so the intelligence surveillance reconnaissance Certainly I think there's both a short-term and a long-term strategy and the long-term strategy would of course rely on the part of Chinese counter-terrorism apparatus to actually cut to the heart of the grievances but in the short term we're also looking at protecting our borders and keeping the Southeast Asian countries safe from the threat of terrorists so I think addressing on both ends there needs to be both measures preventive and pre-emptive measures as well I agree that there should be two but don't we usually do counter-terrorism always take a very short-termism approach to what is the domestic and the cultural issue that should be addressed from a long-term perspective Definitely traditional counter-terrorism methods have been predicated on kinetic approaches but increasingly I think countries are more cognizant of the need for more strategic or softer non-kinetic approaches such as terrorist rehabilitation community engagement and some of these practices have been implemented in some of the Southeast Asian countries to a large degree of success so there is a need for a balanced approach in countering this new iteration of threat from terrorism and with the rise of ISIS and its associated networks I will first get you to thank Stephanie and our discussant for their contributions Finally just to quickly wrap up for the event overall first I'd like to thank all our speakers and discussants for their contributions and in particular our distinguished Chinese visitors for providing a Chinese perspective on some of these very sensitive issues The key goal of the conference was to systematically explore the domestic and foreign policy dimensions of this issue and I think most of the contributors have really drilled down a very deep way into a range of very complex issues and hopefully develop new understandings and new discussions I think more importantly on this particular issue and finally I'd like to thank you all for your attendance and interest in the conference, thank you